State of Exception --- Human Rights Investigations

The US State Department issued its 2023 Human Rights Report on El Salvador this week.  From the Executive Summary:

Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: unlawful or arbitrary killings; enforced disappearance; torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by security forces; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest or detention; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy.  

There have been numerous investigative reports of the severe violations of international human rights standards occurring during El Salvador's State of Exception and the Bukele regime's "war on gangs."  The reports are prepared by a wide range of Salvadoran and international human rights groups.   These reports do not deny the reduction in homicides and gang control of territory during the past two years, but they point out the cost of the State of Exception. 

Here are 13 of those reports:    

In English:

• Human Rights Watch “We Can Arrest Anyone We Want”: Widespread Human Rights Violations Under El Salvador’s “State of Emergency” December 2022
  
  
• Human Rights Watch El Salvador: Events of 2023  
  
  
• Amnesty International  El Salvador: Behind the veil of popularity: Repression and regression of human rights in El Salvador December 2023
  
  
• Cristosal -- One Year Under State of Exception: A Permanent Measure of Repression and HumanRights Violations -- May 2023
  
  
• Due Process of Law Foundation -- Are crimes against humanity being committed in ElSalvador’s “War on Gangs”? -- March 2024
  
  
• Coalition of 7 human rights organizations -- Annual Report on Human Rights Violations During the State of Exception in El Salvador -- March 2023
  
  

In Spanish:

• Due Process of Law Foundation -- (IN)DEBIDO PROCESO: Análisis de las reformas que acompañan el régimen de excepción en El Salvador -- August 2023
  
  
• Coalition of 5 civil society groups -- Muertes en cárceles durante el estado de excepción en El Salvador: presuntas ejecuciones extrajudiciales -- a report to the Special Rapporteur on  Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions of the United Nations
  
  
• Human Rights Observatory of the Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas -- 2023 Annual Report on the State of Human Rights in El Salvador
  
  
• Human Rights Observatory of the Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas -- Informe sobre acceso a la justicia y régimen de excepción en El Salvador.
  
  
• Work Group on Arbitrary Detentions within the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights -- Communication of Special Reporter on Judicial independence (Press release in English)
  
  
  
• Socorro Jurídico Humanitario -- State of Exception: 240 Deaths -- March 2024

This post is the 5th in a series as the State of Exception in El Salvador enters its third year. Read the earlier posts in this series:

• El Salvador has now lived under an emergency "state of exception" for two years
• The Prisons of El Salvador's State of Exception
• State of Exception: In the communities
• State of Exception -- the (In)justice System